Linguistics Commons^™

Preserving The Authentic Voice: A Guide To Editing Oral History, Erin Steck Curtis, Don Norton

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Oral history is popular among many academic circles as a medium of communicating a more personal, intimate view of the past than is commonly found in the dry commentary of a standard history text. The emotion included in a eye-witness account becomes its own commentary as feelings and facts are intertwined in the telling of a personal story, history from an ordinary person’s point of view. It is important to understand history not only as a series of events, but as actual experiences that shape people’s lives. Speaker and interviewer (or reader) form a unique emotional bond in the telling …

Integration Of A Morphological Parser Into The Soar Artificial Intelligence Architecture, Jonathan Dehdari, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Soar is a general cognitive architecture for developing systems that exhibit intelligent behavior. Researchers all over the world, both from the fields of artificial intelligence and cognitive science, are using Soar for a variety of tasks. Psychologists, AI game developers, linguists, and others interested in cognitive modeling use and develop this open architecture. LG-Soar is a project within the general Soar framework that deals with the processing and modeling of natural languages, using the Link Grammar syntactic parser. LG-Soar has been excellent in its ability to accurately and robustly parse English sentences, but the ability to handle morphology, or the …

Identifying The Specific Needs Of English Language Learners, Jessica Gibson, Lynn Henrichsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Problem: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a growing, worldwide church. Thus, the members speak a variety of languages and not just English. Consequently, problems in communication arise such as, contact with church administrators, LDS publications, and unity among church members within a ward. There are differences in these barriers, however, when non-native English speaking members live in the United States compared with when they live in their native country. Immigration, cultural differences, and employment are some possible secular problems that exist for members living inside the United States. Spiritual difficulties happen when they cannot learn …

October 21, 2013: University Theater Production Of Pride & Prejudice Opens 10/24, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

October 18, 2013: Austen Film Festival Covered In Western Herald // Also: Note Corrected Room!, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

October 17, 2013: Gottlieb Lecture & Reception~10/15/13, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

October 25, 2013: Fellowship Opportunity, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

October 14, 2013: English 4100, Spring 2014: Holy Road Trips, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

October 10, 2013: Pride And Prejudice Film Festival Finalized: 10/17 - 10/23, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

English Learning Center Essay Evaluation Technology, Camille Van Katwyk Yorgason, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale, Dr. Diane Strong-Krause

Journal of Undergraduate Research

English is an important skill in today’s world – in the job market as well as in our worldwide Church. BYU has a unique opportunity to assist many international students, including returned missionaries involved in the Perpetual Education Fund, to learn English through its English Language Center (ELC). This center is limited in the number of students it can reach because of the cost and time involved for teachers to perform tasks such as the grading of essays of lower proficiency students. My project was to work on the development of a computer program that evaluates the essays of non-native …

Similarity And Contiguity Of Form And Meaning: A Paradigm Of Grammatical Gender Change In Romance Languages, Eve A. Ross, Dr. Cynthia L. Hallen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Gender in language is currently a hot topic in linguistics and related fields. One somewhat neglected branch of this subject is grammatical gender. Grammatical gender refers to the gender of a word that does not correspond to the gender of the real world object the word represents. Grammatical gender does not exist in English, but it does exist in all of the Romance languages. For example, the French word for “month” is masculine, even though months themselves are not masculine.

The Lithuanian Language And Conference Translation, Rebecca M. Rosenlund, Dr. Cynthia Hallen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Every six months, millions of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints gather to hear the voice of a living prophet and other leaders and teachers. They look forward to the counsel and insight that they will receive for themselves and their families as they face the challenges of daily life. They rejoice in the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the Lord’s will and of his plan for his children living at this time. The proceedings of the semi-annual conferences are sent via satellite to thousands of stake centers and homes so that members throughout …

October 7, 2013: Robert Hayden: A Centennial Conference, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

October 6, 2013: Wmu Students: Sign Up For Engl 4100: Holy Road Trips, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

October 3, 2013: Evan Gottlieb Lecture Opens Scholarly Speakers Series For 2013-14, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

October 2, 2013: Rob Bixby/March Street Press Reading, Saturday, Oct. 5, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

“We Give Way:” 6 Narratives Of The Academic Negotiation Between English And Afrikaans At The University Of Stellenbosch, Alexis K. Boyer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The negotiations between the African National Congress (ANC) and the National Party in 1992 led to the creation of South Africa’s eleven national languages including English and Afrikaans. This paper discusses the intricate relationship between these two languages at the University of Stellenbosch. This project attempts to understand how undergraduate and postgraduate students have negotiated the rise of English as a universal academic language and the maintenance of Afrikaans as Stellenbosch’s core language of instruction. The project works to determine how students view the changes to the policy and how those changes affect them, looking particularly at the effect of …

October 1, 2013: Paint, By Grace Tiffany, Issued By Bagwyn Books, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Borrowing The Essentials: A Diachronic Study Of The Semantic Primes Of Modern English, Karen Esther Swan

Theses and Dissertations

In order for communication to take place, there must be a set of core concepts that are universal to all speakers. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) has proposed an inventory of these concepts, called semantic primes, and uses them as universal concepts in the explication and exploration of cultural values. The English semantic primes, while the majority are Anglo-Saxon, contain words that have been borrowed from Latin, Old Norse, and French. Borrowing lexical items into core vocabulary has many implications. First, the primes are not entirely stable or immune to foreign influence, even the Anglo-Saxon primes have been susceptible to the …

Automatic Identification Of Metaphoric Utterances, Jonathan Edwin Dunn

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the problem of metaphor identification in linguistic and computational semantics, considering both manual and automatic approaches. It describes a manual approach to metaphor identification, the Metaphoricity Measurement Procedure (MMP), and compares this approach with other manual approaches. The dissertation then describes an implemented and simplified version of the procedure, Measuring and Identifiying Metaphor-in-Language (MIMIL), and compares the premises of this system with other automatic metaphor identification systems. MIMIL and three existing metaphor identification systems are then evaluated on a common data set. Finally, the dissertation looks at difficulties which face attempts to automatically identify metaphors caused by …

Language At Play: Digital Games In Second And Foreign Language Teaching And Learning. Language Learning & Technology, Steven L. Thorne, Erin Watters

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

A review of Language at Play: Digital games in second and foreign language teaching and learning Julie Sykes and Jonathan Reinhard 2013 ISBN 10: 0-205-00085-1 US 157 pp. Pearson New York, US

by Steven L. Thorne, Portland State University and University of Groningen and Erin Watters, Portland State University

Language Teaching Research & Language Pedagogy (Review), Elizabeth M. Kissling

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

This book extends Chaudron’s (1988) review of L2 classroom research to include the studies published in the last thirty years, with the intention of providing technical knowledge to teachers interested in conducting research or using research to inform their teaching. The scope is restricted to studies that investigate the effect of some instructional artifact or procedure on learners’ knowledge of the L2, for the most part within face-to-face classroom interactions. Ellis organizes the research into broad topics of interest and further subdivides them by theoretical or methodological construct. He balances presentation of research in both the cognitive and socio-cultural traditions …

Not A Hearing Loss, A Deaf Gain: Power, Self-Naming, And The Deaf Community, David J. Thomas

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Self-naming has long stood as the primary assertion of power for disenfranchised communities in the western world. While person first language (e.g. person who is deaf) has been the preferred language of disability and disability services for the last 20 years, members of the Deaf community have asserted their cultural capital, and indeed, their Deafhood, or defining the experience of being ‘deaf in the world’, through the power of self-naming. This research examines attitudes toward language, self-naming, and disability in the Deaf community and seeks to move toward a more attentive, sensitive, and responsive language policy in the academy.

Historically, …

Teaching Pronunciation: Is Explicit Phonetics Instruction Beneficial For Fl Learners?, Elizabeth M. Kissling

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Pronunciation instruction has been shown to improve learners’ L2 accent in some, though certainly not all, cases. A core component of traditional pronunciation instruction is explicit lessons in L2 phonetics. Studies suggest that Spanish FL learners improve their pronunciation after receiving instruction, but the effect of phonetics instruction has not been directly compared with other pedagogical alternatives. This study reports on the pronunciation gains that first, second, and third year learners (n = 95) made after receiving either explicit instruction in Spanish phonetics or a more implicit treatment with similar input, practice, and feedback. The target phones included a …

September 24, 2013: Austen Film Fest - Preliminary Lineup, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

The Ezafat Suffix: The Syntax-Semantics Interface, Ahmed Saeed Manati

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Any discussion of Dari noun phrases pays special attention to Ezafat and the way it behaves. Ezafat is of great importance to understanding the underlying structure of a Dari noun phrase. Much of this thesis uses the methodologies and tools provided by generative syntax to determine the status of Ezafat and to answer a number of questions posed by Ezafat. I hypothesize that Ezafat belongs to a functional category which is base-generated under D and its function is to mark nouns for genitive case. In addition, the analysis of Ezafat entails the classification of most Dari prepositions as a subcategory …

Technology And Pedagogy: The Future Of Less Commonly Taught Languages, Meredith Kersley Coy, Dr. Michael Bush

Journal of Undergraduate Research

One of the goals of the BYU Center for Language Studies is to improve the basic Swahili course in order to support the African studies minor. An initial concern in teaching such less commonly taught languages is the lack of qualified teachers. In many cases technology is the solution to this problem. Creating on-line lesson materials that are pedagogically sound facilitates instruction in two ways. First, teachers do not have to be as strictly qualified because much of the burden is shifted to lesson plans that are already completed and available on-line. Second, students receive authentic language exposure and instruction …

“Through A Glass Darkly”: Portrayal Of The Mormons In Nineteenth-Century American Periodical Literature, Stanley J. Thayne, Dr. Cynthia Hallen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

During the nineteenth century the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then known primarily as the Mormon Church, was a subject of great controversy in American periodical literature. Major magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner’s, Harper’s, The North American Review, and The Century published articles about the Mormon people. While working as a research assistant for Dr. Cynthia Hallen, documenting literary influences on Emily Dickinson, I came across several of these articles and wondered how the Mormon Church would have been portrayed to readers such as Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the rest of the nineteenth-century American …

Gathering Media For A Turkish Language Course, Laura Ann Knight, Dr. Michael Bush

Journal of Undergraduate Research

When a person visits another country with which they are unfamiliar, it can be hard to understand both the language and the culture of the people. It can be very useful to learn a bit about a country, its people, and language before visiting it. In this project we developed a multimedia computer based program that could be used by business people, tourists, exchange students, or any person interested in being introduced to life in another country. The specific focus of this project was on Turkey.

Crossing Bridges Of Understanding: An Interactive Tutorial For Humanities 201, Rebecca Petersen, Dr. Michael Call

Journal of Undergraduate Research

My goal in creating this tutorial was to “bring to life” some of the sites and treasures studied in the Humanities 201-202 sequence, stimulating student’s interest in the topics and providing support to the faculty teaching the courses. I feel that the module I completed successfully achieves that goal. I created a module, currently accessible in the Humanities PC Computing Lab, entitled, “Vezelay: A Romanesque Masterpiece.”